Auschwitz III - Monowitz

Heinrich Himmler inspects
Monowitz, July 1942

Of the three Nazi concentration camps
located near the town of Auschwitz, the Auschwitz III camp, also
known as Monowitz, was the most important to the Nazis because
of its factories which were essential to the German war effort.
The Monowitz industrial complex was built by Auschwitz inmates,
beginning in April 1941. Initially, the workers walked from the
Auschwitz main camp to the building site, a distance of 4 - 6
kilometers each way.

The photograph above shows Heinrich Himmler,
the head of all the concentration camps, on a visit to inspect
the Monowitz factories in July 1942. Himmler is the man wearing
a uniform. The two men on the right are German engineers. The
engineers lived in the town of Auschwitz, after it was cleaned
up to meet German standards of living. Slave labor was used to
make improvements to the town, after Heinrich Himmler volunteered
the services of the concentration camp inmates.

The Jews who were sent to Auschwitz,
and then assigned to work at Monowitz, had a much better chance
of survival because the factory workers were considered too valuable
to send to the gas chambers, at least while they were still able
to work. Two famous survivors who worked at Monowitz were Elie
Wiesel and Primo Levi, both of whom wrote extensively about the
Holocaust.

Max Faust shakes hands
with a Nazi officer

In the photograph above, Heinrich Himmler
is on the far right; the man in civilian clothes, who is shaking
hands, is Max Faust. The barracks for the prisoenrs are shown
in the background; the slave workers from Auschwitz were transferred
to Monowitz at the end of October 1942.

The factories at Monowitz were built
by the IG Farben company, which was attempting to produce synthetic
rubber, called Buna. The Polish village of Monowice, which was
renamed Monowitz by the Germans, is 4 kilometers from the site
of the factories, which were located on the east side of Oswiecim.
Some of the old factory buildings are still standing, although
now abandoned, while others are still in use as factories. The
concrete wall around the factories, with its distinctive curved
posts strung with barbed wire, can still be seen along the road
from Oswiecim to the Krakow airport.

The Monowitz sub-camp was known as Bunalager
(Buna Camp) until November 1943 when it became the Auschwitz
III camp with its own administrative headquarters. Auschwitz
III consisted of 28 sub-camps which were built between 1942 and
1944. This area of Upper Silesia was known as the "Black
Triangle" because of its coal deposits. The Buna plant attracted
the attention of the Allies, and there were bombing raids on
the factories.

When I visited Auschwitz in October 1998,
I was told that some of the Monowitz factories were still in
operation , but this area was off limits to visitors. On my trip
to Auschwitz in October 2005, I hired a taxi driver to take me
to the site of the factories, but I was told that they didn't
exist anymore. On my way back to the Krakow airport from Oswiecim,
the taxi driver from my hotel pointed out the factory buildings,
partially hidden behind the concrete wall.

The Monowitz camp was kept open until
just a week before the Russians liberators arrived. The last
roll call of the three Auschwitz camps showed a total of 67,012
prisoners. Out of this total, more than half were the workers
in the Buna plant at Monowitz and its sub-camps. The figures
below are from the Nazi records which were turned over to the
Red Cross by the Soviet Union after the fall of Communism. They
were published in a book written by Danuta Czech.